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Thank you for linking this paper. His take is the opposite of mine - he proposes current *e was actually *a, instead of *o. It’s actually worth investigating this because at least some of his arguments are fair points, specially #2 (o-grade behaving like zero-grade) and #3 (*o limited distribution).
It does create a problem, though; in plenty languages you’d have *a *ə→*e *a, as if they swapped places. While phenomena like this are attested (Dixie English comes to my mind*), it’s messy and cross-linguistically rare.
*e.g. Southern US English renders /äɪ̯/ as [ä:] and merges /ɛ ɪ/ as [ɪ], so if you look from Middle English to now it’s like the vowels were swapped - /i: ɛ/→/ä: ɪ/.
Yep, I mean his take is not quite opposite of yours, as it uses the same units and has a similar idea on his mind, just one step is opposite.
Back when I read the article first time, I tried to figure out the details - I suppose they wouldn’t immediately swap places but would first have a “fission” of *a (= trad. *e) + H into *e, *a, *o, and then *ə (trad. *o) > *o, which might(?) be a more natural late PIE triangular vowel system that would then, I suppose(?), lead to the later outcomes more naturally. So I guess I don’t see the swapping?
But I might be talking absolute nonsense since I don’t have a satisfyingly firm grasp on traditional PIE reconstruction either… D:
Yup - the core idea is the same, only the “implementation” is the opposite.
I’m calling it “swapping” because, in some branches, what’s currently reconstructed as *o ended as *a: for example PIE *h₁óynos “one” → Proto-Balto-Slavic *aiˀnas, Proto-Germanic *ainaz. So if his hypothesis is true, in those branches the mid vowel becomes the low vowel and vice versa; this does happen but it requires some specific conditions (like gliding, length, or some other secondary articulation), otherwise the vowels end merging midway.
On its own *a *e *o wouldn’t be too natural, but if we include *i *u it does. And by then odds are that the later were already “promoted” to vowels.